cohen executive director of the national whistleblower center thanks for your time .turkey's prime minister is to meet a group of protesters in a bid to stop the ongoing unrest in the country is following the biggest crackdown in demonstrations since they started almost two weeks ago as police stormed taksim square in istanbul overnight leaving the clashes are to go how's the latest from the scene. where the protesters used to be where there were banners and barricades now there are tons and scores of police officers really there all over the place on every single corner there's really heavy police presence here police actually were kind of blocking some of the square as well this of course all of this comes just twenty four hours after the square has seen an immense police presence here first the protesters who are camped out here for just a little over a week they were swept away by water cannons and tear gas in the early hours of the morning our crew went out to film it one of our. one of our cameraman actually sustained serious damage to his camera because it was

people has the right to know of them and that's we need to change the playing field the national whistleblower center has been trying to get meaningful legislation passed for decades it's time congress step up and say yes here is the right way to release this type of information that won't damage national security but will let the american people know what they know the real truth ok charlie that seems quite reasonable that probably it's going to charlie to be fair go ahead charlie says i don't large part i agree with what he's saying and you know one of the problems we have right now is there is a level of hypocrisy when you look at the last four five years of the obama administration where if it's something to do with killing osama bin laden and giving the president a bit of a raw raw that gets leaked to the press very happily but if you're james rosen of fox or the associated press you're being listed as a flight risk and a coconspirator so there is a hypocrisy coming out of the obama administration and on top of that when you have also the scandals with benghazi the i.r.s. on spending the i.r.s.

the constitution project as well as david cole a pinko david is a legal director of the national whistleblower center thank you both for joining me so david let's start talking about edward snowden as a whistleblower put this into context with me with the whistleblowers that we've seen in the past the john kiriakou the daniel ellsberg is the bradley manning's how big of a leak is this this is probably the biggest whistleblower disclosure since daniel ellsberg leaked the pentagon papers and individuals like mr snowden who work for contractors of intelligence agencies or even intelligence agency employees have no place to go to make this type of disclosure so it really shouldn't be a surprise to the obama administration that someone has again chosen to communicate grave problems with this surveillance system to a member of the news media should we be surprised at how snowden out it himself was that a smart move on his part it was a smart move for him to stay alive number one it's a very dangerous thing that he's doing for his own family's own safety and to come public in this way i think is a very admi

that was michael cohn president of the national whistleblower center. a member coloring on the sidewalk as a child an american favorite pastime could land you in jail the color in front of a bank or politicians house san diego activist jeff olson age forty is facing up to thirteen years in jail and thirteen thousand dollars in fines for scribbling anti big bang chalk messages in front of three san diego san diego bank of america branches where he isn't the only activist arrested for writing in chalk on the sidewalk just yesterday harrisburg pennsylvania man was arrested for chalking the words corbett has health care we should too on the sidewalk in front of pennsylvania governor tom corbett mention the kicker his charge was an action that served no legitimate purpose for how many of us have violated that law today around the country other cities have seen a crackdown on chalker us from austin texas to minneapolis minnesota to discuss this with me with me i was twenty earlier by artist alex shaffer from the l.a. studio i first asked him if chalking is a

brennan center for justice also in washington we have michael cohen he is president of the national whistleblower center and in london we cross to charlie wolf he is a writer broadcaster and political commentator crosstalk rules in effect that means you can jump in anytime you want to listen if i go to you first in washington d.c. are whistleblowers an endangered species right now no not at all ok i think there will always be in every society people who are going to come forward if they have something to to report you know but the costs are pretty high my costs are high and getting higher to. the concert getting very high if you look at someone like bradley manning i don't think it's it's not easy to imagine a situation in which someone has been more harshly treated by the criminal justice system and yet that did not prevent edward snowden from coming forward and even from identifying himself so i think right there that's proof that even aggressive crackdowns on leaks are not going to prevent them from happening well if i can say with you do you think that mr snowden learned from bradley manning i mean

information to the process to discuss this i'm joined by michael cohn president of the national whistleblower center hi there michael so at this point do we even know if general cartwright is a whistleblower no there's no way of determining that right now what we have is a leak investigation. in fact what you have is a leak of a leak investigation where the justice department is saying that they are investigating general cartwright which you find a little i find little disturbing because all of a sudden with the snowden investigation going on it gives cover that the that the administration goes after high and low level people at the same time but this is a very different situation you know it's very different than mr snowden to say general cartwright is a whistle blower. there's no indication of that at this point you do have an individual who had access information sharing it with the news media maybe it was off the wrong. maybe it wasn't authorized to be shared was authorized with a nod and a wink from the administration potentially i mean so at some point. the facts have to come out and what you

cone executive director of the national whistleblower center told my colleague matt traitors that people will continue to expose secrets regardless of the crackdown against them. well i think the government is going to charge him probably under the espionage act and they're going to try to make an example so others who have information about wrongdoing and crimes in our national security system are intimidated and don't blow the whistle but we can set or julian a songe also weighed in on this and he said stone is likely to be persecuted by the u.s. for many years into what you say your fears are let's take a listen to his comments before you respond to an amazing time. just three years after the united bradley manning revelations with bradley manning in trial and the snowden revelations come out after. i and a many others had called for the exactly such revelations to expose the surveillance state so i think we're winning i think that's part of a new international politic that is developing. do you think there is any kind of like i said any kind of victory to be made from any of this or

brennan center for justice also in washington we have michael kahn he is president of the national whistleblower center and.

center lane of civil libr y libertarian. the national security agency conducts foreign intelligence that's not too outrageous to me. >> let me ask you, is he a hero or whistleblowerin the words of "the new yorker" a grandiosenacissist. >> you have to do certain things to be whistleblower. talk to the inspector general, general counsel, demand that you speak to congress. i mean all of those things make an individual a whistle blower. fleeing with stolen documents, going a third country and making them public through the press which reported them quite inaccurately, that's not a whistle blower. >> google, facebook and others have come forward asking the nsa to allow them to provide some more details about what typesoff queries they are responding to. should nsa provide them with permission. >> they need some head room. believe me i feel their pain. i cannot tell you the number of times in government when the press grabs a story, walks it to the darkest corner of the room, inaccuracies, exaggeratations and all i want to do is go public and set the record straight so the american people could understand what we were doing, but coin. >> michael if we saw that informat